hallway
by valakaite
Summary: After escaping briefly from GLaDOS and getting hurt in the process, Wheatley and Chell take solace in a hallway. drabblefic.


The hallways of the facility were long and dark, patches of sunlight where the roof had fallen shone as streams of blessed light against the dreary background of nothing. Plants wove themselves around the old paneling. They crawled up the walls and ate into the metal, desperate to put their mark on the place so away from nature.

She was awake, the Goddess of steel, eager to put justice against both Chell and Wheatley as they ran through her halls. He had just broken Chell free, and they were continuing on the previously interrupted escape plan. The waking of GLaDOS and the reintroduction She had for Chell into the test chambers had set them back. Wheatley was eager to get started again, ecstatic that he could even break Chell out in the first place.

Upon GLaDOS's waking though, she had crushed him. She had Broken his ribs and damaged some organs, merely content to toss him like nothing after constriction like that. He thought he would die, but the returning system of the facility recognized his condition and stole him away to an infirmary. Decades of neglect left the wing in poor condition, unable to fully fix him. It too a while for the infirmary to do its shoddy job, and being unconscious the entire time he had no idea how long Chell was actually tested for.

He took it in stride though, casually asking Chell to stop on occasion so he could rest. He would want nothing more than to slide down the wall and perhaps never get up again. HE never did though, just leaned on things and made sure not to put pressure on his middle. At first she didn't notice, but after a while she did. He didn't need air yet he would gasp for it and grasp at himself in pain, twitching violently on occasion with a horrible hacking cough that sounded as if he needed something to come up.

She silently asks him to sit down and he happily agrees, though wary of her intent. Leaning his head back and making a quiet groan against the pain he slips down the wall, falling to the ground with a dull thud. He sits in silence for a moment then she joins him, sitting closer than he thought she would have. He's afraid she knows, afraid she may not want to keep him around anymore if she knows he's hurt as badly as he is. She turns to him, asking a silent question with her eyes that he does not recognize.

Gently and softly, she presses her hand to his stomach and begins to lift his shirt. He's too surprised to stop her and she pulls it up, suspecting the worst. She sees exactly what he had tried to hide, the bruising and battery of new and old events, his body the living proof of Aperture's abuse.

He flinches and grits his teeth as she traces the sutures of the quick fix from the medical ward, the horrible bruises brought by GLaDOS, and the old twisted scars from years past when Aperture was a functioning testing facility.

He says he'll be alright, but a gasp of breath and a gritting of teeth suggest different and she lets his shirt down. She traced her hand up from his stomach to his shoulders, where those awful metal handles dug into soft flesh. She pressed her hands to him, pushing him back so he lay flat on the ground. He didn't understand and he protested against her actions, but he let her do it none-the-less.

She laid him down and then herself beside him. Stretching herself along him. She yawned and then nodded to him, giving him the realization that they should sleep.

He was unused to having people around him, as was she. However, with a warm body next to yours, a new idea that nothing bad can happen comes into mind. It's strange, how safe you can feel with a total stranger in a dim lit hallway.

He falls asleep long before her, nestled into her warmth as she stroked his back. She's not tired, but she knows she will need him to leave this place. If that means letting him sleep on the floor while being looked for by a murderous AI that has already nearly destroyed him then so be it.

She didn't quite know what to make of him. She hadn't really liked him at first; he had a strange lilt to his voice and constantly told her what to do and where to go. But he seemed sincere in wanting to leave, and wanting to leaver with _her_. She couldn't remember the last time anyone did anything specifically for her. The fact that he had come to her rescue, especially in his current position, overwhelmed the part of her that didn't like him. She didn't think she could trust him, not really. However, as she lay in the musky hallway surrounded by plants and sunlight from the roof, this strange man who had risked so much to get her out seemed like a friend.

She couldn't trust him, but he was her friend.

And she would be his.


End file.
